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VPNTunnel.se

VPNtunnel.SE is a Swedish provider of primarily OpenVPN service. The biggest distinction VPNTunnel.SE has over the competition is that it keeps absolutely no logs. This means you are completely anonymous when using VPNTunnel.SE. Although VPN service is some of the best protection money can buy, VPN service providers are sometimes forced, or elect, to keep logs of their customers connections. VPNTunnel.SE, by privilege of operating in Sweden, and also by virtue of their business strategy – do not log any of their customer connections. This means there is absolutely nothing to turn over, if it were ever requested by law enforcement, or your internet service provider. Suffice to say, VPNTunnel.SE gets extremely high marks when it comes to protection!

VPNTunnel.SE advertises this extreme level of privacy all over their website, and users have never reported a breach of this trust. Although, technically, there may be legal issues for customers using the VPNTunnel.SE in countries that require logging, such as the United States, it is unlikely VPNTunnel.SE would have anything to turn over anyway. For this reason, VPNTunnel.SE is often listed in hacking group forums and websites as a “popular” paid VPN service. One such group is the very popular but loosely knit “Anonymous”. They often list VPNTunnel.SE near the top. Just goes to show that VPN service really is in everyone’s best interest – especially if “Anon” have already identified it and are actively using the service!

Although VPNTunnel.SE receives high marks for protection, they only offer the OpenVPN protocol currently. This is a more secure VPN protocol, but a number of their users have been waiting for iPhone/iPad/Android support in the form of PPTP protocol. As of this writing PPTP is not available, though it is clearly in the works and the VPNTunnel.SE blog indicates it will out by “the end of June (2011)”. For tech savvy customers, you can try OpenVPN for mobile devices and use the VPNTunnel.SE certificates. It is worth mentioning that VPNTunnel.SE utilizes 2048bit encryption with OpenVPN – which is the highest level of encryption available to date on OpenVPN. Most other services utilize a minimum 128bit, and range all the way up to the maximum of 2048bit.

The software VPNTunnel.SE provides customers is called “Connector” and offers the basics as far VPN service features are concerned: a dashboard, country selection, random server selection, and connection guard. This software is required, especially if you intend on using the VPN service features it provides. The dashboard is fairly self explanatory; it accepts and stores your user/password information. The country selection and server selection do exactly what they indicate by providing a list of available servers and the ability to randomly connect to any server in the list. Connection guard is a nice feature, that when configured, will force an application (i.e. firefox.exe), to utilize the VPN connection. This means that selected application can’t expose your real ip address if you unexpectedly get disconnected from the VPN server. Connection guard basically helps to terminate the internet connection for the selected application if an unexpected disconnection to the VPNTunnel.SE server occurs. Connector only works for Windows, while “TunnelBlick” supports Mac. A standard OpenVPN software install with the VPNTunnel.SE certificates provides support to customers on Linux.

Most of the VPNTunnel.SE servers are located in Sweden in a datacenter with a capacity of 10 Gbps. Recently VPNTunnel.SE expanded their services and are now offering additional servers in the US, Germany, Netherlands, and Denmark. P2P is allowed on all servers, and in general the speeds reported are acceptable for downloading. However, the VPNTunnel.SE blog does indicate some downtime and connection issues for some of the newer servers, especially the US based servers. Our editors are still in the process of testing their own accounts, and we will update this review once the verdicts come in from each editor. It’s worth noting that we are cautiously optimistic given the popularity of VPNTunnel.SE.

One final note: plan pricing, although listed in Euro’s, is quite competitive across the board. Especially when you consider the level of protection provided. Their short term plan is very competitively priced, and as term lengths increase a nice discount is offered. VPNTunnel.SE does not offer a free trial.

Logging Policy: VPNTunnel.se prides itself on keeping no logs. Their policy states, “we apply a no logging policy on all swedish servers, and a 30 day logging policy on the other servers.”

August 2011 Update: We have completed an In Depth VPN Review and Full Speed Test of VPNTunnel.SE! The VPN review includes a look at their customer web control panel, openvpn software, and speed test results from their servers. Finally, we have some hard data on how their network is performing! Head on over to our News Bulletin to check it out.

March 2014 Update: VPNTunnel.SE has dropped the “.SE” moniker, but they continue along as a solid VPN service provider with fast and cheap service. Offering OpenVPN and PPTP VPN services, VPNTunnel support Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android operating systems with ease. Current prices are $7/mo (5 Euro) for the OpenVPN package and about $10/mo (7 Euro) for the OpenVPN and PPTP package. The VPNTunnel software has completed a number of improvements including a shiny new interface. Although technically still “beta” its come a long way since inception. Head on over to their forums to get the download link. Note to Windows 8 users, you probably want to stick with the free open source OpenVPN software client, rather than the VPNTunnel software app.

17 Responses to “VPNTunnel.se”

Very glad that you have a review up of this service, but I am surprised it is not at the top of your list. VPNTunnel.se is awesome considering they don’t keep logs and are based in Sweden where the laws are very favorable. Other services like StrongVPN even say they keep logs so…I haven’t had any problems with the disconnections you talk about but I do know they have been rapdily expanding to deal with demand. I really like the fact that you can pay with UKash so you can stay completely anonymous.

VPNTunnel.se is the best by far. They dont keep logs and they give 2048bit protection. I’m in the US and you can pay them with a lot of different methods and they don’t do any crazy verifications (like some other providers). Plus they allow P2P. I don’t think the speeds are as fast as some US providers, but thats because I primarily use their swedish servers even though they have US servers. I don’t think I’ll ever switch from VPN Tunnel.

Found these guys thru Anon. Have been very pleased. I never EVER log into the US server though because they have to keep logs there. They actually just updated their privacy terms to mention that specifically and tell everyone to use the swedish servers for no logging. I think VPNTunnel.SE might be the only ones using blowfish as well. Most are using AES encryption. Sometimes swedish servers get a little bogged down, and you see that on their blog. Most of the time it is cleared up quickly. I hope they will be expanding soon. Cheap and accepts liberty reserve for anonymous payments too. High rated except for reliability knock, but I think they’ll eventually fix that, and if you can take connecting to the other nonswedish servers you shouldn’t notice.

This is a very dishonest service and should be avoided at all costs!!!

Quote from their FAQ:
“Most of our servers are located in Sweden in a datacenter with a capacity of 10 Gbps. Recently we expanded though, now we are able to provide ip:s from more countries like US, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark.”

…but they do not have any servers in Germany DE, Denmark DK or the Netherlands NL so how can they say they are expanding their IP range???
Expanding gives the impression they already have IPs in those locations to expand.

Is it not true that of this comment date the IPs they purport to refer to are servers in DE, DK and NL but in fact all for servers in Sweden only?

This from a Support Ticket response when I queried the IPs for all International servers in DE, DK, NL, SE and the USA that appeared to all refer to data centers in Sweden and one in the USA:

“That’s because we have servers in US and Sweden only…”

So why are they being deceptive about having servers in other countries that do not exist?

They also quote on their home page that they use 2048 bit Blowfish encryption, when in fact this is also not true – I checked the actual connection logs for the actual encryption being used.

Why these obvious deceptions?

Their NEW OpenVPN v1.0.0.0 client won’t initialize on my XP SP3 PC ( I have tested multiple VPN provider’s client software with no issues) and their Support answered that I should use their Classic version which uses a very old OpenVPN client software version instead.

In the end I download the latest OpenVPN client for Windows version from the OpenVPN web site which has many advancements and improvements, not to mention the security upgrades.
I then configured it myself and that is when the International server deception came to light as all the respective country IPs I asked for were in a Swedish DC only except for the USA IP.

There are too many drop outs to make this a secure and reliable VPN and I urge caution when using it in light of the above deceptive behavior.

They have no cancellation or refund policy, so you would be out of luck if you asked for a refund.

Honesty is always the best policy and can you, in light of the all the other deceptions, honestly believe that they do not keep logs?
Users of VPNTunnel, will never know if they do or not keep logs until this is tested at some point in time.

There are many more honest VPN providers out there and VPNTunnel does not qualify in this category.

editors note: Wow, we’ve never seen anyone this unhappy with VPNTunnel.SE. That said, everybody is entitled to their own opinion. However, we’d like to try and clear up a few things though for our readers. First, there is a clear difference between servers and IP’s, with any VPN provider. A single server, located in X country, can offer IP’s from X, Y, and Z countries for example. Companies do not maintain servers to offer single IP addresses. Servers do not have to be in the same country that they are offering IP addresses from. This is especially true in the EU area, where servers in say, the UK, will be offering IP’s in Ireland, Netherlands, etc. Have a look at some of the other big players (StrongVPN, or HideMyAss for example). Notice how the number of IP addresses clearly exceeds the server count? Sometimes by more than 10:1 (i.e. 1000 IP’s on 100 servers). VPNTunnel.SE says they have Swedish servers, but other IP addresses available – from their FAQ: “Most of our servers are located in Sweden in a datacenter with a capacity of 10 Gbps. Recently we expanded though, now we are able to provide ip:s from more countries like US, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark.” For practical purposes of bypassing IP blocks (say at Hulu) it doesn’t matter where the server is, it only matters where the IP is from.

Second, regarding the encryption, what you are probably doing is confusing the session authentication encryption with the actual “secure tunnel transport” encryption. Authentication is where you get the 2048bit. If the tunnel between you and the VPN server was actually 2048bit, your connection would be very very slow. Everybody in the business basically does 128bit on the tunnel. You want a high level of encryption on authentication, i.e. the entrance but once the person is verified you need to balance encryption strength with speed. It is a big bummer you couldn’t get the client to install on your XP machine though, especially since they wouldn’t offer you a refund…as far as the logging goes, you might want to check their blog. They clearly indicate no logs on the swedish servers, but they must log on the US servers. Good luck Gemma, and we do appreciate your comment. Feel free to come back anytime and hopefully comment on a service you enjoyed!

Damn, looks like Gemma mad! LOL…I’ve been using VPNTunnel.se since Anon pointed them out in their preferred list awhile back. Love the editors note by the way…she’s still using XP? 1998 wants it’s OS back! I stick to the swedish servers, so I really don’t know what she’s complaining about. She doesn’t like the fact they don’t have servers in another country? Then go pay more for a plan somewhere else that will not respect your privacy, I guess…Swedish servers giving me all kinds of EU IP addresses works just fine for me! I will ding them on reliability though, I’ve noticed a few downtimes in the last few months. Their twitter account normally announces when it’s fixed though.

SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG HERE? I set up 3 accounts over the period of months: May, June, July, Three different accounts from 3 different ip addresses in the U.K all of which are between 20mbit-50mbit….and all I can say is the speed is a joke I rarely got over 648Kbps on any of the pcs used in the test, most averaging 211kbps? the line is intermitenet, ping is very bad etc.

I do not understand how people are saying they are great with speed and service?

Whenever I contact them with asking for help on the issues, I get the same old emails back to me asking for log which has nothing to do with speed of connection and problems experienced through surfing and which nothing gets solved they dont bother getting back in the end:(???…seems very strange over the 3 months from 3 different computers in 2 different areas in uk that the same symptons exist, also the amount of issues i’ve experienced with downtime with servers is unacceptable???? WHAT IS GOING ON ????

Please can we have an update on review of this outfit, because I smell a RAT?

editors note: wow only 211-648Kbps? ouch thats like 25KB/sec to 80KB/sec…that’s really interesting considering the servers are in Sweden, so a UK connection should be ideal. we have VPNTunnel.SE on our list for in depth review and full speed test, so we will move them up in priority to try and get to the bottom of this. in the mean time, you might check out our existing speed tests for other providers, since either of them would greatly exceed the transfer rates you are seeing now. both speed test results can be found in the news bulletin section

Seems like they are still having some trouble right now as I cannot connect at all (I get an “incorrect username or password” message). I’ve contacted support and they say it is because of some DNS problems they are currently fixing and that it should be back up tomorrow…

Like “wtf” said, when they are working they are really great, but once they are down, it can get tricky.
editors note: yup, we were just going to tweet about the downtime. the only servers we can get to work at the moment are US based VPN servers from VPNTunnel.se. earlier today we were connecting without problems and pulling great download speeds (>1000KiloBytes/sec) from sweden, but it looks like they are down now…stay tuned…we will tweet an update once we hear something from their staff!

I know they have been down a little bit this month, but they were never down for long. Personally I think VPNTunnel.SE is great and their pricing is freaking awesome for unlimited and P2P access. I’ve also found that whenever I have a problem I can usually get “random server” to work. I just make sure it isn’t a US server! I’m in the UK and the swedish servers always give me really high speeds. I use them for all my online stuff including BT. Makes me much safer with all the crazy lawsuits going on. Oh, and I think they are actually 1024bit, not 2048, but I’m not sure.

Honestly these guys aren’t that bad. I started using VPNTunnel about 3 months ago. There has been some problems but they dont seem to last long. I am normally able to get plenty of speed, sometimes as high as 10mbps. I have a 30mbps US connection so I consider that pretty good. It does drop though, and you can expect that to be cut in half sometimes (5mbps). Still it’s more than enough for anything I do online like youtube and hulu. I’ll trade the super speed for no logging and swedish protection basically anyday. I hope they continue to get better though, they could use some more servers in NL. My support emails about a problem or issue normally get answered in about 24hrs. Not perfect, but they are all overseas anyway. Overall I grade them down a bit on speed, reliability, and support. Other than that, no issues. I’ve already recommended them to some friends.

Using VPNtunnel.se since they started. There where issues with reliability along the way, but things happened and most of the time the outcome was OK.
Modded the old GUI for auto-log-in etc.since they did not address these annoying issues themselves and accumulated a list of servers and ports to address to over time to control it via the config.
HOWEVER:
Recently a dramatic change seems to have taken place. Let me explain my ratings:
PRICE:
Fine on paper,but played 2×3 months = 6 months. Payments confirmed by them and my bank. THEN THEY CLOSED THE ACCOUNT
No reason given.That makes it the most expensive service on the market
So beware !
PROTECTION:
Beware of the ConnectionGuard in the new GUI. If your connection comes with errors (last line in the log) the GUI will indicate “connected”.
The ConnectionGuard will not react.
Your IP will be fully disclosed !
This happens frequently (servers overload) and means that you have to watch the log carefully every time you connect or reconnect.
This was possible in the old GUI but NO LONGER !
This is potential dangerous and completely counterproductive (overriding all arguments about encryption and logs kept)
So beware !

( I guess this is due to that the ProtectionGuard is basically VPNETMONitor incorporated in the new GUI. VPNETMON has the same issue if not modded).

RELIABILITY
First of all, whatever you do when installing the new GUI do not let it update/install your Net-Framework automatically. Result of which will be a messed-up Framework (ever tried a clean reinstall ? Good luck).
There are in fact some DE-NL-US-DK servers up, sporadically though. Together with the log-issue this means that the SE servers are overloaded so
connectivity is all but excellent.
Another issue I discovered overtime is that even when forcibly connecting to a SE server (by using a specific Swedish server-IP and port
it sometimes throws an e.g. 46.x.x.x IP, clearly not Swedish.This happens both with the new and old GUI.
And by the way, the IP,s given on their homepage are not relevant and misleading.(and no use asking their support)
Finally I must mention their blog. It is never updated in time but days after any event/issue. So what’s the use ?

SUPPORT:
What support ? I strongly would discourage you from using their support. Any answer you will get (if lucky) is very basic and standard. If you sake twice they
will become increasingly arrogant and the last sentence will be “If your not happy,go elsewhere”.
About the issue mentioned in the beginning I have been contacting their INFO, SUPPORT, TICKET with one mail every day for 5 days now and not
received any answer. They take the money but do not deliver.
So beware !

SPEED:
Varies (as with all other services). Got everything between 2 and 10 (very good) on a net in PC connection of 16.

Summery:
Something is happening. Growing too much too fast ? Management ? Anyway I wouldn’t take up on their discount-offerings.

(Above is based on comp with 3 other services I have been using alongside)

Regards to all of you

editors note: thanks for the thorough review! i assume you mean you payed (not played) for 6 months and then the account was closed? did you try the live help on their website, or email? on the connection guard, i think what you are really meaning is that the GUI says you are connected when you are really not. this can happen, and isn’t a fault of the connection guard, which is a different feature altogether. this happens when, as you say, errors are registered during connection to VPNTunnel.SE servers. so yeah, basically when it errors, you aren’t really connected! your ip would be exposed at that point. sorry you didn’t seem to have much luck with them! i hope you come back and review some of the other 3 providers you mention. for what it’s worth, we had a much better experience with their service and support. we have been using it for the last 2 months. our in depth review and speed test does mention some of their short comings, but it sounds like you really had a rough time – much tougher than we are able to verify ourselves.

this reader also adds:

Thanks for your nice comment.
I agree in full.
But lately something is going on and it coincides with their 2 year (very long time) special offer. I would not take up on that.

Short update

8 DAYS NOW and still disconnected (or 15 days in fact)
CONNECTION: The serious part is all lights are green, although not connected and no log visible in new GUI that shows it. Maybe the new GUI released yesterday fixed that but since I’m still cut off I cannot test it.

PAYMENT:
First payment was returned yesterday by PayPal (thanks PP) without my doing.(but there was a “case” pending immediately after payment. So obviously I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE.
Second payment was done via same Visa directly.

SUPPORT: One mail each every day the past 8 days to INFO, SUPPORT, TICKET and lately DARKNET (same service). NO ANSWER but:
used 5 diff. accounts with and without proxy. ALL ACCOUNT NOW LOCKED.
THIS INDICATES TO ME THAT THE HEADERS ARE KEPT, thus the original IP,s are stored.
Now Imp really p.o.

Will come back with other 3 as requested but they are reasonably good. NOT SWEDISH THOUGH as they are all the same, originating from the “Smart-Biz” fraction from the Piratebay-gang.

All the best to you and sorry for spelling.

editors note: thanks for coming back to us and offering to talk about the other 3 providers you are utilizing! feel free to drop us an email: editor at vpnandusenetreviews dot com especially if we don’t have the providers listed on our website. we are always on the lookout! thanks again!

At last a website that gives good independent in depth review of VPNTUNNEL.SE. I have been using this vpn-provider for just over a year and my overall opinion is that it is an excellent service for the price. The no logging policy puts VPNTUNNEL.SE streets ahead of its competitors.

editors note: Hello Italy! Glad you found us 🙂 Not so happy to hear you missed the confirmation email from VPNTunnel.SE. Our experience with their support was generally pleasant and timely, unless you get them during a Swedish holiday! 😛

These guys aren’t that bad, I don’t know why people complain so much. First off, yes the support is basically all email but I’ve never had a problem like some of these people describe. I ordered, the emails were sent to me, and I installed the software. It was working easily in Windows. It can be unrealiable, sure, but for the money and privacy I don’t care that much. There is normally at least one SE server up and that’s all I care about. They don’t do any logging on those servers, and that’s the whole point of VPN anyway. This is the only company that basically does that. 5 stars for protection.

I have some experience of using VPNTunnel.
I work all over the world , but used to have access to all services that have a home in Alabama such as Spotify, for example. Before I started working with vpntunnel, I tried many different VPN, but stop there. I am chose it, because it has the best price/quality ratio and good speed.
Perhaps my reply will be helpful to someone.